Friday, February 26, 2010

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or at least the opinion of one hundred kindergartners.

Every Wednesday I head over to the elementary school and volunteer with the Kindergarten Enrichment Program. There isn't enough money in the school budget for our kindergartners to receive any official Enrichment classes such Music, Spanish, PE, Art, and Science. So to make up for this every year the PTO recruits parents to fill the void and teach the classes.

I did this last year when Peter was in kindergarten and I'm doing it again this year with Sarah. It is a big time commitment but my kids love the fact that I help out and it is a great way to get to know all of the kids that my kids will be going through school with.

I help my neighbor Lisa teach Spanish. She and I both took French in high school but luckily that doesn't matter. And right now thanks to Kindergarten Enrichment, I probably know more Spanish than French.

After the Enrichment program is over most of the parents stay to have lunch with their kids. And Lisa and I usually jokingly ask our daughters which Enrichment class they enjoyed the most because we know they don't like Spanish.

Sarah always responds with PE and Lily always responds with Music. Oh, well. I guess I don't blame them. We try to make Spanish fun but there's only so much you can do with the names of the parts of the body or with the animal names.

Sarah came home yesterday with this drawing in her backpack.

Her teacher had asked each student to write their favorite Enrichment class and then illustrate it. Sarah wrote "I like Sanesh". Translation: I like Spanish.

How sweet!

She proudly described the different elements of her picture. Lisa is the woman with the black curly hair standing in the center of the drawing. I am the purple figure sitting in a chair. (Which is my normal spot.) The numbers on the other side of the drawing represent the class singing the Spanish number song. Uno, dos, tres....you get the idea.

I told her I loved the drawing and then I asked her if anyone else drew Spanish. She shook her head and said, "No. I was the only one." Figures.

And as she walked away I examined the drawing a little more closely. The red and purple circle is the rug the students sit on during Spanish. And if you will note, the three students sitting on the rug all have big frowns on their faces.